


however long

by mangozaya



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bottom Bang Chan, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Multiple Universes Colliding, chan dies in one of his lives but its a reincarnation au so hes okay !!, its flowery but nonetheless explicit in a sense, most other members are mentionned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27242275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangozaya/pseuds/mangozaya
Summary: Chan and Jisung are given three lifetimes for the two of them, alongside one universe that plays them like puppets.Everything ends as all things do; far too soon.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Han Jisung | Han
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	however long

In his first life, Jisung falls in love with Chan silently, and watches as he slips gently from his grasp.

It’s a binder of lost moments, loosely bound together by fraying tape and rusted metal rings, and the final pages are left blank, but not by Jisung’s intentional design. Jisung never realized he wouldn’t have any more moments left to be pressed onto white sheets.

Jisung cautiously flips a page and they’re in middle school. While most students are off to the side by the crowded swings, and Jisung’s got a seventh sense trained on Chan; the older boy is off and rowdily playing soccer while Jisung prefers the cool of the shade, but they reconnect at the end of recess, linking pinkies and swinging their arms wildly into the oncoming student traffic, and this is when Jisung first feels something gentle in the rise of his chest.

Flashforward to high school and Chan’s got his first boyfriend, a kind toothy boy by the name of Minho, and Chan is entirely _smitten_. The sight of hushes kisses against lockers and stolen moments behind the bleachers have Jisung flinching without meaning to, and Chan starts to feel a little distant even when he’s pressed against Jisung’s side, warm and comfortable and _solid_.

It’s a Sunday morning when Chan arrives at Jisung’s doorstep, entirely too cheerful for having broken up with Minho earlier that week, and Jisung can’t quite believe his eyes.

Chan’s a bit bashful.

“He’s a sweetheart, he really is, but we didn’t- uh, how should I put it–” Chan purses his lips, and Jisung longs to kiss the cherry gloss off of them. “–we just didn’t click. It’s really not a big deal.”

Jisung invites him in to bake afternoon cookies.

Another flash of the camera and Jisung is in his second year of college when he realizes that he isn’t in love with Seungmin, and it chokes him up far more than it affects the other. Seungmin’s a perfect gentleman really, and Jisung cries snot into the hem of Seungmin's collar. Seungmin sends him off with a smile, and promises to keep in touch.

(Years later, Jisung attends the wedding of Seungmin and Changbin, and he knows he’s got a lifelong friend.)

Chan and Jisung don’t meet up on campus as often as they did when they were fresh-faced and enamored by their newfound freedom in college. Their friend groups divide harshly down the center; Chan forgets Tuesday breakfast plans, and Jisung stops picking up Chan’s calls in favor of a drunken Friday night at the bar. Chan graduates college and they lose touch, and it hurts more than Jisung wants to admit, but he knows he never had Chan, not really. There’s never an official end, but one day Jisung forgets to text Chan, and Chan forgets to text Jisung, and months pass without contact. Jisung finally graduates college and moves into his own apartment, and he painfully considers putting Chan on a housewarming list, but decides against it at the last minute. Jisung taps and likes the occasional post on Chan’s social feed, but he hardly looks to see who Chan is with anymore. Jisung finally loses his phone on a rainy Tuesday morning, and never bothers to grab Chan’s number from any of their acquaintances.

The sun still rises in the east, sets in the west, and Jisung continues forward.

He doesn’t cry, and he never did, because Chan was never his to begin with. There’s no love story, but Jisung’s still in love, and there’s only a few chapters of them that Jisung can salvage from the course of his life.

It’s also not dramatic, like a scene where the brokenhearted runs through the rain, screaming up to the heavens when they finally reach a train station with no approaching train. Chan slips away in the dead of night, when the sun is just rising to flare the sky in a somber warm tone, and Jisung never fully realizes Chan’s gone until he’s at a cafe. Jisung is somehow years down the road and yet no further along, and Chan’s seated beside a golden boy, one who makes Chan light up in ways that Jisung remembers he once could.

 _Hyunjin_. The beautiful blonde’s name is Hyunjin, and Jisung thinks he understands. Jisung was always meant to be a passing cloud, but Hyunjin was an output of sunshine to Chan’s mellow sky—and Jisung knows himself to be dramatic, but he can’t help the lifeless metaphor from curling his tongue.

In a split second decision, Jisung pays up front at the cafe, drops a hot chocolate to Chan’s name—he remembers how Chan likes it: one dash of cinnamon and two pumps of caramel—and he leaves Chan behind on a winter’s day, snuggling further into his fraying coat as he flags down a taxi on the busy streets of his hometown.

( _Their_ hometown.)

Jisung sees a social feed from Chan two years later, where he’s flushed and happy and glowing a _radiance_ that Jisung didn’t know Chan could _have_ , all while holding Hyunjin’s hand tightly in his own. They’re married, Minho has somehow become Chan’s best man, and Jisung doesn’t leave a comment on the post. He slides his phone shut with a soft click, and goes to the kitchen to warm morning coffee.

It’s another normal Wednesday, and Jisung goes about his day.

Chan never meets Jisung in his second life.

His service years are long, his boots are worn and caked in filth as he treks thousands of miles across barren desert, but for all the cannons that fire a brilliant red smoke of victory into the morning’s dying sunrise, he never makes it out of the battlegrounds alive.

His fellow infantryman, a steady set soldier by the codename I.N., finds him slumped over smoking debris, shrapnel wedged deep just under his third rib, and Chan’s already half lucid by the time he’s hauled into their armored vehicle.

Han Jisung, as his laminated badge proudly boasts—a bright-eyed medic, fresh in the field and not yet haggard from the grueling reality of war—marks Chan’s final time of death, and moves on to his next patient.

The universe grants them a final, third life, and it ends as all the others do; far too soon.

On the eve of their wedding, twelve days before the end of the world, Jisung lazily twirls a sheathed dagger around in his palm, and watches as his city burns to the ground.

There’s a sweeping panic below their tower, the acrid smell of smoke in the air, fires devouring everything in their passing sight, but Jisung pays little attention. It’s all white noise, and Jisung instead hikes Chan’s legs a bit higher against the backdrop of madness.

Chan is breathless, unraveled and spread hazy between the span of Jisung’s trembling thighs, and Jisung wants to _ruin_ him.

Chan arches against him wordlessly, body taut as Jisung grips the sharp indents of Chan’s hips, anchoring him against the sheets as he pushes in, murmuring soundlessly against his chest to soothe the burn. Chan shakes and falls quiet, swallowing his own small sounds against Jisung’s shoulder, the initial stretch wiring his body taut; his arm braced against the dip of Jisung’s collar.

Jisung’s breath is heavy against Chan, as he intertwines their fingers to give a gentle squeeze. Jisung’s cheeks are flush from exertion, lovely and dusted in pink, pretty underneath the moonlight, but it’s Chan who looks vulnerable. He slumps into the protective hold of Jisung’s chest, taking a moment to adjust to the sensation of being so _full._

It’s a momentary decision, but Jisung slips a hand from Chan’s hip, reaching to grind the base of his palm against the low dip of Chan’s waist, hovering far too close and yet somehow not close enough. As quickly as Jisung can react to Chan’s immediate spasm around him, Chan sounds low in this throat, and Jisung is suddenly too warm, giving way to relieving the pressure coiled deep in the thrums of his bones, canting his hips into the heat between Chan’s thighs, and Chan groans at the drag of friction.

There’s a brazen red flush decorating the pale of Chan’s neck, and Jisung wants to _drown_ in him, if only in the moment. Chan’s love has always been milder, and his hands roam under Jisung’s sheer material of expensive silk, slipping beneath for a moment to curl around the thickness of Jisung’s thighs. Chan reaches forward. His soft, pink lips part to press against Jisung’s own, and they move against each other for a moment, gentle presses and lingering kisses a distraction to the chaos of the kingdom falling away, leaving Jisung and Chan in a distant palace of their own.

Jisung works him up to a rhythm, slipping in and out as Chan twists with every motion, moving frantically to shallowly fuck himself back on Jisung, and Chan falls apart beautifully.

All he can focus on is how Chan’s balance tips to one side, his sweat-soaked curls shifting to cast a shadow over his hooded eyes. Chan whines low in his throat, grasping without success at the curve of Jisung’s shoulder blade with every particular, sharp thrust of Jisung’s hips, snapping into Chan with a pace far too reckless, too preoccupied with chasing a high than finding an even rhythm.

Jisung crowds Chan closer into his chest, switching their angle without warning, and Chan throws his head back, shuddering as his thighs draw in tight, and Jisung’s nails rake without intention at the expense of Chan’s back, marks that were sure to leave red streaks in the morning.

Jisung gives a final sharp thrust of his hips, as the pressure and desperation leave Chan gasping around the sound of Jisung’s name, his breathe leaving him in sharp staccato, pushing Chan just over the edge to coat the soft press of Jisung's stomach as his staggered moans pitch higher.

Chan’s heartbeat is impossibly deafening to his own ears, and he’s slipping so far down into an ocean of endless depth that he forgets to breathe, forgets everything about anything beyond this moment, and allows himself to be swept away in Jisung’s murmurs of ‘ _Baby, I have you_ ’ and a final, resounding _‘always, forever and always_ ’.

♡

A while later, Jisung kneels beside their bed, arms splayed against the soiled white of their sheets, and lightly trails his nails along the curve of Chan’s hipbone.

Chan rests, drawn out between the folds of their silk sheets, and Jisung falls in love endlessly.

Chan is beautiful beneath the burning light of their oil lamp, wrapped lazily in the silk of their kingdom’s labor, the rise of his chest prominent against silken sheets as he rests, having fallen asleep long before Jisung made his way back to their bedside. Jisung reaches forward, not yet to Chan, but to his bedside stand, and settles down his crown from where it’s heavy atop his head. It’s rusted, shined to silver from years of splattered blood and oxidation tarnishing the golden finish, but to Jisung it’s worthy of royalty.

Chan’s eyes open slowly, cheeks rosy from sleep, and his eyes glitter as bright as the moonlight that reflects in the water basin beside their bedside. Gently resting his dagger into the water, Jisung dips a hand in, rippling the surface and disrupting its swirling, watching his reflection distort into something more unsettling.

From beside him, Chan stirs, and murmurs low under his breath, nonsensical and sweet. Jisung is silent as he leans down beside him, taking in the plush of Chan’s slightly parted lips, the way his lashes gently flutter as he rouses, turning to nestle into the warmth of Jisung’s arms.

It’s silent tonight, inside the drawn screen of their room, and Jisung draws Chan closer, close enough to feel his slowed heartbeat from where he is half-bare against Jisung, and presses a soft kiss just above the curve of his brow.

It’s mesmerizing, how flickers of red and brilliant orange coat a gentle horizon just over Jisung’s balcony, white marble and polished stone a stark contrast against the darkening skyline of fumes and smoke. It’s a little bit like poetry, he muses, reminiscent of the numerous scrolls and volumes of text in Chan’s expansive library, where every story and fable might label Jisung a monster—a man too gruesome to claim the title of human.

Jisung doesn’t care much for the human experience. His written epithet would be elegant with a simple: _I do all I do for love, and he who loves me shall rest by my side._

Jisung burns down the city for Chan tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> to the literature enthusiast chat, you know who you are, i appreciate you all endlessly *mwah* a lil extra thank u to bee for all the quotes of inspo
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/izayashu)


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